The course is good BUT very intense. Again, very intense, do take this into consideration. It's 1 year and it's a whole lot of self-study. Interpreters at the EU have said it has a great track record and many graduates enter the EU.

The university itself, well, let's say it's very basic and it's a bureaucratic hell hole (we are talking about Portugal here) but again it does seem to be good prep for government work :D The university's website is stuck in the stone age of technology, that's why you can't find much information.

But the course itself is definitely good, with good instructors, and it's both intensive and intense.

Edit: btw, I don't know what links you've come across but I'll give you all the ones I have. The first is very descriptive of the course and the second is the e-platform for which the link on the first page is broken:

Usually, that speaks for quality. Nevertheless, you should try to get in touch with alumni to see if the teaching style and model will suit you. There are many different approaches in teaching, e.g. some schools offer only 4 hours of tutored classes per week (that's usually the case in Paris and England), while others will be more time consuming (>20 hours/week in Belgium). There are also one year programes or two year programmes, depending on the country/school.

hmm... I'm sorry you think so, I operate under the assumption that knowledge does not necessarily imply bias - it may, but it doesn't have to... plus recipients thereof should be able to discount bias, if need be - and therefore drew this question to the attention of the colleague in question, singularly qualified, IMHO, to reply to it :-).

@ TheInterpretator: I have the feeling you have a grudge here. First down-voting two contributions, then questioning a possible reply from the course leader. If in some way you're discontent with your school's programme, it would be nice and constructive to share your concerns openly.

Regarding having a course leader answering questions, I believe we're all educated enough to balance between different sources of information available and take into account possible bias.

But hey, a course leader taking the time to post here? Isn't that great? I'd appreciate some explanations, even a dialogue. Plus, we could have hard figures, both success rates at entrance & final exam and SCIC tests.

@TheInterpretator: I do understand your concerns, however I do think implying a conflict of interest here is a bit premature. Very much interested in this uni (not many offer Croatian as one of their A langauges) and I'd love to hear it from a primary source. So I'd appreciate it a lot if the course coordinator could provide some input here.

I have no grudge. In fact, I thought that by saying the course is good I was recommending it. I don't believe "definitely good" can be interpreted negatively.

The question isn't "what is the structure of the course" nor "how is it run" but rather about the quality of the course and the university and neither of the answers addressed the question so they're not useful. Providing a link to AIIC doesn't answer the question and I'm sorry, but if a course were horrible, what course director would come on a forum and openly state "The course I run is horrible"? Do you really believe that?

And yes, the university has bad sides like other universities and I really don't see what's wrong with honesty.

To the question "how good is the uni", there are many, many answers depending on what you want to know and what your rating criteria are.
.. and your own expectations.

How the course is run and what the course structure is might well have an impact on overall quality and subjective perception of the latter. So, instead of just saying "Yeah, go for it, it IS good", one might want to give more circumstantial information so the person asking might form his/her own opinion.

Quality can determined by quantity: How many tutored hours will I get for my money? How efficient is the course (one year or two)?

Being listed by AIIC vouches for a certain quality regarding the content of the course and the people who teach. The best practices I've linked will give more details on that. I trust the curiosity of the person asking to read, compare and reflect on the information provided.

Note from the moderator:
May I remind everyone that this is a question and answer site and NOT a forum: http://interpreting.info/faq/
Participants to this Q&A site want to find answers to questions and not a long list of comments. Thank you for your understanding.